Research

How Children Think & Learn 
I found in the book 'How Children Think & Learn' published in 1988, that Bernstein found there were two different codes. The elaborated and restricted code are how Bernstein describes the way that the two different classes typically speak. The restricted code is typically working class, they use short sentences with a smaller range of vocabulary. They tend to use one word answers and gestures. Elaborated  code is typically middle class and involves longer sentences, context free conversations with a wider range of vocabulary. Bernstein believes that children are socialised by their parents to use one of these codes depending on their class.
I could test this by talking to children from different social classes and recording a conversation with them. I would then analyse the language they used and compare it after.
If this was not possible I could record a conversation with older people e.g. a group of teenagers of a certain class, to see if the stereotype fits Bernstein's predictions.

Q1 Analyse how text A uses language to create meanings and representations.

Text A is an interactive website about the government, politics and current affairs in the world. It is used to inform, educate and also entertain to an extent. The purpose of the website is to create an interesting way to learn about politics etc. It also uses quiz's to gain statistics on current affairs. An affordance of the website is that it is anonymous so people can give their honest opinions and this may maximize the amount of people using the website and giving honest opinions. However, a constraint is that as the questionnaire and website in general is not face to face, questions can be misinterpreted and therefore answers are not reliable. This is due to lack of paralinguistics features and being unable to explain meanings.

The website appeals to young people as it has a modern design and layout. It has been made as interactive as possible to make the topics seem more interesting. As politics is not a topic young people usually have a strong interest in, the website makes it more engaging. Some of the time teenagers under the age of 18 may feel that they can not get involved in politics but YouGov contradicts this by the first option on the page being 'Take Part'. Although this grammatically is an  imperative it is not a command as there are other options to choose from and it has no instrumental power. By giving three main options on  the main page, 'Take part, 'see results' and 'solutions' represents YouGov as a place for interacting an getting involved.

The interrogative on the home page, 'what would you like to do?' makes it seem as though you have the power although they are using constraints by only giving you three options. However they use the interrogative to meet Goffman's face needs, they have to mitigate their language as they can not talk to the audience face to face.


Q3 Compare and contrast Text A and Text B , showing ways in which they are similar and different in their language use.

The two texts have different purposes, text A is to educate and involve the audience where as text B is to inform. Text A discusses events happening in the near future e.g the Presidential elections in the USA. Text B is informing on the events that have already happened in the Bristol City Council election.

Text A uses many imperatives such as 'Take Part', 'Find Solutions' and 'login' although these are options they are grammatically commands. This is because the website is for interacting therefore they want the audience to take part and by using imperatives it encourages this. Text B however, uses mainly declaratives such as 'Labour has won a majority on Bristol City Council after gaining seven seats'. These are used to inform readers. The verb 'has' in this is used to show the event has already happened therefore they do not want the audience to do anything, they're only letting us know past events.

A similarity between the two texts is they both use statistics. In text A an example of this is 'Boris Johnson's trust on the issue of the EU has fallen by six percentage points, from 36% to 30%.'. In text B an example of statistics being used is 'Turnout was 44.76%, with 141,790 people casting a vote.' By using quantitative data it can make the information given more reliable. This is often necessary in an article like text B and I found the text A statistics on an article within the website. By using statistics the articles can make their arguments more c convincing and educate the readers.

A difference between the two texts is Text A uses interrogatives such as 'What would you like to do?' and the questionnaires. This is because text A tries to create a two way conversation by getting the reader involved in actually answering questions on the topics which adds entertainment aspects because it keeps he audience interested. Text B however does not use interrogatives as it is not trying to create a conversation, there is not even a comment section.

Overall Text A is much more interactive then Text B. It is trying to get its audience involved. YouGov uses synthetic personalisation and interesting its audience in 'boring' topics. The BBC article is more about facts and statistics.

Opinionated article about the use of work language in other contexts (hairdresser perspective)

Target Audience-The Guardian

Is work taking over your life?

Do you use your work language in other situations?

Each occupation have different Lexis.

It is common knowledge that the average worker can not go a day without talking about work but can they go without talking like they are at work? It is wrong for workers to spend their lives feeling as though they are constantly worrying about work and not being able to come out of work mode when they are in other situations.

Being a hairdresser I have a large lexical field that I use at work and I often find myself using the jargon at home. Whenever I am told to relax by family it does not help, because my mind goes to a method of straightening hair called relaxing. Is this normal?

Whilst hairdressing has improved my small talk skills, it often means that the conversation often goes to the topic of hair. I also tend to converge (make my speech similar to theirs) with my customers as it makes them feel more comfortable whilst having their hair cut. Therefore when I talk to friends or people I meet I tend to converge with them too.

I can not speak for everyone and maybe I am the only person who does this but if not then I think it is wrong that we spend our lives talking as if we are at work. Workers should be able to use their jargon at work and then cut off as soon as they leave.

Gender equality speech

"I'm not sexist. Being sexist is wrong and being wrong is for women".
Sexism occurs everyday in conversations between friends, family, colleagues. Between girls and boys. Sexist behavior can happen somewhere as casual as a street or in a formal setting such as a courtroom.When we think of the word 'sexism' we often think of discrimination against women, however it can happen to anyone Prof. Sonja Starr's research on federal criminal cases suggests that "men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do,". .

Fighting for gender rights is often frowned upon when a male is the one fighting, especially when they are our age. Teenage boys are often mocked for talking about gender equality and often have their sexuality questioned when doing so. Even though they are fighting for their own rights too, there is an idea that it is wrong to  stick  up for the opposite gender either. Why is it seen as weak for a male to fight for gender equality when it affects them too?

In 1970 an equal pay act was created which meant men and women got the same amount of pay for doing the same job. However even now in 2016, 46 years later this is still not the case. Campaigners   say that women still earn £5,200 less per year than men. It even affects top professions like lawyers, a full time female lawyer on average earns £10,000 less than their male counterparts. The actress Jennifer Lawrence took to Facebook to express her anger when she found she earned less than her male counterparts.

Cambridge elevate 13.5.1-13.5.4

13.5.1
The logo on the Olympic flag consists of five differently coloured rings representing the five main inhabited regions of the world, with the rings interlinked to represent friendship and unity. This logo represents everything to do with Olympics and is used on all products related with the Olympics. Just like this logo stands for the Olympic organisation, words and phrases can stand for people.


13.5.1-Activity 11

The FedEx logo represents the company it stands for. The white arrow between the E and x of Ex represents speed and reflects how the company will deliver your parcel quickly and directly to you as the arrow is pointing towards the x which may represent the destination relating to 'x marks the spot'. The word express is also used in the logo to also show how quickly they will deliver your parcels.

Evian is a water company. The logo represents the company by having the words 'live young' in the logo. To look young and be young is seen as desirable so by adding this to the logo it interests the audience. The picture above the words Evian is of blue mountains. It creates this ides of freshness and the water coming from these mountains which may encourage the audience to buy it.

13.5.2

Representation can be name calling which can ha different extents, it could be children in a playground or debating politicians.
In a Mail online article David Rose wrote about how he was unsure about some claims on global warming. He did this by using derogative terms. One of the phrases he used that stood out to me was  'McCarthyism', this word has many negative connotations as it relates to McCarthy who was famous for the communist witch hunts in America. This was when many people were prosecuted for being, 'unamerican'. These people were punished for their opinions and so this relates to the climate change article as he is suggesting climate change professionals are acting similarly to McCarthy.

British stereotypes article analysis

13.5.4 stereotypes.

The article creates a jokey feeling around the subject of stereotypes and uses humor to approach the subject. The first piece of humor we see is in the title 'British stereotypes:do mention the war, please!' The belief that British people always want to talk about Britain's victory is mocked in this title as it uses the verb 'please' to create sarcastic undertones straight away so that the reader is aware not to take the article too seriously. If the reader still was not sure whether the article was serious or not it goes on to say that these British stereotypes are 'a thumbnail sketch, not the whole picture'. This clears up that the writer knows these stereotypes are not the whole picture and that they are clearly using the stereotypes for comic affect.


The genre of the text is an article from The Guardian which could be online or physical newspaper. The article would be received by anyone who reads The Guardian on a regular basis or perhaps someone who has searched for articles on stereotypes online and has come across this. The audience would be these guardian readers or online readers who have searched for something similar. The purpose of the article is to entertain as it is written quite informally. We can see this in the first word of the article 'Brits', this is a contraction/abbreviation of Britons. This use of abbreviation makes the article seem more casual. This shows how it is used to entertain rather than inform. The reader would maybe expect for the article to inform them on some more factual information and not really expect for it be so entertaining.

Answers

a)This is a website made to help teachers inform students on Fairtrade and how they can help. We can see this as the first thing you come to is the options of what level of students you are teaching and all the different options to teach. The website would be received by teachers maybe being told by other teachers or they may find it when researching the subject themselves. The website is engaging as it gives you multiple options and accessible drop down lists to choose from. The graphological features of the text help interest the audience. The writing is spread out across the page and each section is accompanied by a picture. This helps identify what each part of the text is about and encourage the audience to read more as it makes the page seem easier to read. The red, larger writing gives prominence to important words and draws the readers eye to them. The words at the top of the page are ion a red box which makes them stand out, these are clearly what they want the reader to see as the box offers for you to donate, get involved or sponsor a child.
The affordances of the text is that it gives teachers different options so that they can inform any age group of pupils about the cause, from key stage 1-5. The constraints of the website is that people can use the resources and not actually donate to the cause. The page is limited on how much it can encourage donations as it may come across as excessive. However the page overcomes these limitations by making the reader empathize with the 'Fairtrade grower' so that they want to donate rather than feel they need to.

b)The genre of the text is an online article that is informing its readers on Fairtrade failing to help poor farmers as the company claims it does. The website would be received by Daily Mail readers who tend to be older more conservative or someone who is looking up Fairtrade online may come across the article. The purpose of the article is to inform readers on the negative sides of Fairtrade. It does this by having a negative title 'fails to help poor farmers'. The verb 'fails' implies that the company were incapable of helping the farmers and the adjective poor makes the reader feel empathy for the farmers and encourages them to find out how they could treat these deprived farmers badly. The bulletpoint strapline gives the reader a brief understanding of what the article contains and may encourage the reader to carry on reading. The graphology of this article is fairly simple which helps the reader concentrate on what the article is about.

c)The first website's graphology is very bright and spread out with large writing in bright red. This is used to draw the audiences eye to the features they want to stand out, such as donating to the cause. The articles graphology is much more simple and dense, this is because the article is not trying to get the reader to interact or give money, it just wants to push the message across. The websites show a contrast with how they want their readers to relieve them. One article encourages interaction and the other does not at all. The Fairtrade website is in bright colours with equally bright pictures, this makes the page seem positive. Contrastingly the Daily Mail article is fairly bland with only a couple of pictures that are dull and lacking in the positive vibes the other website gives off.


On the Faitrade website the verb 'donate' is right at the top implying that you can help the cause. However on the Daily Mail article the verb 'fails' stands out in the title and  straight shows the negativity. The daily mail also uses statistics to back up its points even in the strapline. Whereas the Fairtade website uses personal stories to make the reader empathize with the people the charity want to help. The pictures and names on the website make the audience feel a personal connection to the farmers.

The websites hold different purposes. The first website is to create a teaching resource for schools and to inform what the charity is and how to help. It does its by using drop down boxes and creating lots of links to take the reader to different parts of the website. The article is to inform and create awareness. This article does create empathy for the farmers as it informs the reader how the charity are not actually helping them properly.